Under Pressure. Can COP25 Deliver?

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Opinion

Farhana Haque Rahman is Senior Vice President of IPS Inter Press Service; a journalist and communications expert, she is a former senior official of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization and the International Fund for Agricultural Development.

Climate change effects, such as extreme weather events, drive up environmental remediation costs. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

ROME, Dec 2 2019 (IPS) – Mass public pressure backed by the weight of scientific reports is starting to bring governments to their senses as the annual UN climate summit kicks off in Madrid today.

But despite warnings that the planet is reaching critical tipping points, the two weeks of talks with nearly 30,000 participants and dozens of heads of government attending may still end in that familiar sense of disappointment and an opportunity missed.

The annual Conference of the Parties, this year being COP25, was to have been a highly arcane if crucial process of finding agreement on carbon markets, known in the jargon as Article 6 of the ‘rulebook’ to implement the 2015 Paris Agreement on stopping the planet from overheating.

Highly contentious, and in part pitting developing countries like Brazil, China and India against others, the Article 6 debate could not be resolved at last year’s summit – COP24 in Katowice, Poland – nor at meetings in Bonn in June and hence was left for COP25 to try and fix. The other big elephant in the room – setting more ambitious national targets to reduce carbon emissions – was conveniently going to be left to be settled at next year’s COP26 in Glasgow, Scotland.

But action is needed now, and senior officials representing nearly 200 countries have been put on notice that the climate emergency in all its forms is dominating the public sphere across the world. Just last week we saw student-led demonstrations and strikes in many places that appropriately fell on Black Friday, delivering a broadside against rampant consumerism as well as government inaction.

Farhana Haque Rahman

“Striking is not a choice we relish; we do it because we see no other options,” youth leaders Greta Thunberg of Sweden, Luisa Neubauer of Germany and Angela Valenzuela of Chile declared in a joint statement.

“We have watched a string of United Nations climate conferences unfold. Countless negotiations have produced much-hyped but ultimately empty commitments from the world’s governments—the same governments that allow fossil fuel companies to drill for ever-more oil and gas, and burn away our futures for their profit.”

UN Secretary General António Guterres has told COP25 that “the point of no return is no longer over the horizon”.

“In the crucial 12 months ahead, it is essential that we secure more ambitious national commitments – particularly from the main emitters – to immediately start reducing greenhouse gas emissions at a pace consistent to reaching carbon neutrality by 2050. We simply have to stop digging and drilling and take advantage of the vast possibilities offered by renewable energy and nature-based solutions,” Guterres said.

Just last month the UN Environment Programme’s annual Emissions Gap Report warned that the Paris Agreement ambition of keeping average temperatures within 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial times was “on the brink of becoming impossible”.

Global greenhouse gas emissions in 2030 would have to be under 25 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent to reach that target but, at current rates of growth, emissions are projected to reach more than double that level. Clearly drastic action is needed.

Reinforcing the sense of emergency, the World Meteorological Organization reported that atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases reached new record highs in 2018. China is the world’s largest emitter.

Spain stepped in to offer Madrid as a venue for COP25 after Chile withdrew as host because of mass anti-government unrest. However Chile is still leading the conference and together with Spain will be pushing countries to act quickly to raise the ambition of their carbon emission reduction targets. Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez says the goal is for “the largest number of countries” to commit to net zero emissions by 2050.

From 2020 to 2030, emissions must be cut 7.6% a year to meet the 1.5 degrees Celsius goal, the UNEP says.

However the main negotiation process in Madrid is expected to focus on the unfinished business of the market-based mechanisms to create and manage new carbon markets under the Paris Agreement. This would allow countries and industries to earn credits for above-target emission reductions that can then be traded. Big developing countries have already accumulated huge amounts of carbon credits under the previous but now largely discredited carbon credit scheme. It is a highly complex tangle of interests.

Carbon Brief, a UK-based climate website, says the Article 6 debate has the potential to “make or break” implementation of the Paris Agreement which comes into force next year.

“To its proponents, Article 6 offers a path to significantly raising climate ambition or lowering costs, while engaging the private sector and spreading finance, technology and expertise into new areas. To its critics, it risks fatally undermining the ambition of the Paris Agreement at a time when there is clear evidence of the need to go further and faster to avoid the worst effects of climate change,” Carbon Brief explains.

While Article 6 is a highly technical area, the underlying issues are political, with some countries forming unofficial alliances to defend their own interests rather than the common good of the planet. But politicians have been put on notice that this time the world’s public is watching closely. Horse-trading cannot be allowed to put our futures at risk.

 

Translating Ambition to Action: High Hopes for United Nations Action Week

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Opinion

Cameron Diver is Deputy Director-General, the Pacific Community (SPC)

New Caledonia, Sep 13 2019 (IPS) – In less than 10 days, countries from around the planet will come together in New York for the United Nations Secretary General’s Climate Action Summit. I look forward to representing the Pacific Community (SPC) at this important event, and throughout “Action Week” during the upcoming UN General Assembly.

Cameron Diver

The interconnections and synergies between major issues of global concern and the key role multilateralism and international cooperation can play in helping tackle these challenges are illustrated by the agenda of the week from 23 to 27 September. Underpinned by the Sustainable Development Goals, each of the high-level summits will focus on commitments to accelerate action across climate change, enhance efforts to secure healthy, peaceful and prosperous lives for all, mobilise sufficient financing to realise the 2030 Agenda and address the specific issues and vulnerabilities of small island developing states.

The week of summits kicks off with a focus on climate action. And this is, in my mind, highly appropriate. The multiplier effect of climate change undermines our efforts to achieve the sustainable development goals, it increases the challenges of biodiversity conservation and sustainable use, it intensifies competition and the potential for conflict around natural resources and it poses the single greatest existential threat to the lives and livelihoods of millions of people around the globe. From where I stand, the science on climate change is clear. To take only these examples, the IPCC Special Reports on the impacts of global warming of 1.5° above pre-industrial levels and climate change, desertification, land degradation, sustainable land management, food security and greenhouse gas fluxes in terrestrial ecosystems provide us with the most robust, high quality evidence base to understand the significant negative impact climate change is already having on our natural environment, on the wellbeing of people, ecosystems, flora and fauna and the massive and potentially irreversible consequences of inaction. As regards our ocean, the upcoming Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate is likely to confirm what the islands of the Blue Pacific continent, and others whose cultures, traditions and livelihoods are deeply attached to the ocean, have already sensed: the climate crisis is a real and present threat to ocean and coastal ecosystems and the human communities that depend on them.

The stakes are high, but where there is a threat there is also an opportunity. If we act now, there is still have time effectively to tackle the climate crisis! To put it simply: ambition without action is insufficient and simply not an option. SPC is committed to working with our Member States, international and regional partners to translate climate ambition into tangible climate action, for both mitigation and adaptation. The benefits could be huge, with the Global Commission on Adaptation estimating that investing $1.8 trillion in climate adaptation globally in just five areas from 2020 to 2030 could generate $7.1 trillion in total net benefits. We are also convinced that we must collectively harness the synergies between, for example, climate and the ocean, biodiversity, health, security, economic development, food systems, land use, gender and many other development areas to fully exploit the potential of the SDGs and ensure that future pathways to sustainable development are integrated, inclusive, nature-friendly, climate-informed and resilient. SPC is already implementing this approach with its Members and partners. One illustration is our EU funded PROTEGE project, whose intended outcomes include a transition to sustainable integrated agriculture and sound forestry resource management; sustainable fisheries and aquaculture management that is integrated in and adapted to island economies; sustainable integrated water resource management; and invasive alien species control, all against a backdrop of climate-change hazards that require ecosystem and biodiversity protection, resilience and restoration.

As was recently remarked to me at the Green Climate Fund Global Programming Conference in Korea: “we already know what we must do. We need to stop talking and start doing”. It is my sincere hope that “Action Week” in New York will indeed be a turning point for “doing”; a catalyst for firm, measurable commitments to tangible actions that match the level of ambition already expressed to address the climate crisis and the multiple development challenges that remain as we approach the final decade of the 2030 Agenda. If we do not translate ambition into action, we will fail ourselves, we will fail future generations and we will fail our planet. If, however, we take up the challenge and take sustained, coordinated and integrated action, we can win the battle against climate change, create new and innovative opportunities for development, deliver on the promise of the Global Goals and trace a positive pathway to new era of resilient and sustainable development. High hopes indeed…

 

Human Rights Watch Disappoints on Human Rights

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Opinion

Michelle Bachelet, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. Credit: Jean-Marc Ferré/UN Photo.

GENEVA, Jul 25 2019 (IPS) – On 22 July 2019, Kenneth Roth published an article in Publico, Lisbon, entitled: “UN Chief Guterres has disappointed on Human Rights”.

This essay lampooning Antonio Guterres is not a voice “against the tide” but very much mainstream – and demonstrably skewed. Major NGOs headquartered in rich advanced countries and enjoying generous funding from the Establishment may not always think “out of the box” and are as likely, as are the interest groups which support them, to politicize human rights and therefore to disappoint rights holders in smaller or weaker countries.

While they do contribute to exposing situations of human rights violations worldwide , they are not exempt from biases which reflect the structure of their central governing bodies or the cultural environment within which they operate. They cannot arrogate to themselves the sole legitimacy to speak in the name of the civil society of many countries , and when they claim to do so, they may disappoint rightsholders, particularly in the developing countries, whose priorities are frequently different from theirs.

Kenneth Roth’s bludgeoning of the UN Secretary General in this regard is yet another expression of grandstanding and even of a measure of arrogance. HRW’s criticism of China, Russia, Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela, would be more persuasive if the organisation addressed with the same intensity the egregious violations of human rights in many other countries

Sober analysis and stocktaking are necessary to determine whether and to what extent the priorities and agendas of NGOs’s like HRW are set by the overall interests of the established power-structures and multiple elites in many countries. Kenneth Roth’s article expressing disappointment at the human rights performance of Secretary General Antonio Guterres fails to identify the root causes of human rights violations.

His admonitions have little or no preventative value, and do not formulate constructive recommendations such as, for instance, the provision of advisory services and technical assistance to many countries that need it and have asked for it.

HRW’s “naming and shaming” strategy has been inconclusive at best because “naming and shaming” depends on the authority of the “namer” and the impartiality of the methodology. Kenneth Roth’s bludgeoning of the UN Secretary General in this regard is yet another expression of grandstanding and even of a measure of arrogance. HRW’s criticism of China, Russia, Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela, would be more persuasive if the organisation addressed with the same intensity the egregious violations of human rights in many other countries.

For instance, Mr. Roth does not mention the denial of the right of self-determination to millions of people, the retrogression in the enjoyment of economic, social and cultural rights (prohibited by the Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights), the looting of natural resources and degradation of the environment by transnational corporations and their neocolonial schemes, the impunity enjoyed by politicians who engage in aggressive wars and by paramilitaries and private security companies, the devastating human rights impact of blockades by source countries and economic sanctions on the populations of Gaza, Syria, Iran and Venezuela, which have caused and continue to cause tens of thousands of deaths.

The politicization or as we now witness with concern, the“weaponization” of human rights is taking the world on a slippery slope. When the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR)was adopted in 1948, Eleanor Roosevelt, Charles Malik, René Cassin and others spoke of human dignity and the inalienable rights of human beings, but article 29 of UDHR also reminded us that “everyone has duties to the community”.

Indeed, what is most necessary is global education in human rights, including the human right to peace, education in empathy and solidarity with others – compassion, not predatory competition in “the human rights industry” on a “holier than thou” ticket.

Meanwhile, Secretary-General Antonio Guterres should not be expected to act as a Human Rights NGO. This high office is not that of an unaccountable activist. It is neither that of a general that can blast any state at will nor is it a secretary that has to be subservient to the prevailing powers that be.

That high official must recognize the reality of the power balance that he cannot fundamentally alter but must strive with obduracy and at times courage to stretch the international community towards more compliance with the purposes and principles of the United Nations. Most importantly this means the promotion of peace through conflict-prevention, good offices, impartial mediation, disarmament and yes, human rights. When all diplomacy fails and only then may “naming and shaming” become an option. But it is a default option and a sign of diplomatic failure.

In the experience of both of us as Special Rapporteurs of the Human Rights Council, we have delivered on our mandates, not by openly challenging the authority of states or claiming to teach them lessons in human rights but by giving quiet diplomacy a chance .

This is how one of us together with another Independent Expert facilitated a lifting of the sanctions on Sudan and this is how we are again currently engaging with protagonists of other conflicts. We have succeeded in confidence-building and contributed to the release of detainees. Persevering and discrete advocacy bears fruit.

We want a SG that puts values above politics in human rights matters and this is, in our opinion, what Guterres is doing. We have a Secretary General that can speak for truth and can at least listen to the narratives of the smaller and weaker states who have no access to the world media and whose action is distorted by biased reporting.

Of course the murder of Khashoggi is a tragedy because beyond the tragic loss of a human life, it is the freedom of expression that is targeted. But Kenneth Roth does not mention the thousands of migrants whose lives end in the liquid graves of the oceans because saving them at sea is becoming a criminal offence in some « enlightened » nations.

Are there different values attached to life according to the « exploitability » of its loss for political aims? We do not think that the Secretary General should go down along this road, even if this may cause disappointment in some quarters.

We would be really concerned if the Secretary general were to follow the path of selective indignation advocated implicitly by Mr Roth, because he would lose the moral leadership that we all, people of good will, can identify with across the world. THAT would be a major disappointment.

We welcome in Antonio Guterres a Secretary General who does not hesitate to call a spade a spade, a SG who promotes peace and does not stoke conflict, who challenges unilateral economic sanctions, who supports the Right to Development1 and places the Secretariat of the United Nations in its service. We welcome a SG who, together with the new UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, are engaging all of humanity in the noble task – day by day – of implementing civil, cultural, economic, political and social rights in larger freedom – and in good faith.

Idriss Jazairy Special Rapporteur, UN Human Rights Council
Alfred de Zayas Former Independent Expert, UN Human Rights Council

 

Global Governance and Information

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Opinion

Ambassador Walther Lichem* of Austria is President Inter Press Service (IPS).

VIENNA, Apr 16 2019 (IPS) – The past seventy years since the end of the second world war have been marked by profound changes in our international system. Relations between states have become more horizontally structured interactions with a rising significance of the common good articulated and pursued by newly-created international programmes and organisations.

Ambassador Walther Lichem

The international agenda increasingly consists of items addressing internationally and globally-shared challenges of dependencies and interdependencies.

The traditional security and peace focus has been broadened into areas of concern which require contributions and activities not only by states but by international organisations and programmes who jointly with non-state actors such as academic institutions and associations, civil society organisations, the private sector including those who joined the Global Compact, have contributed to a new pattern of leadership in the processes of defining our global goals and in the implementation of the related programmes of action.

Another characterizing element in our Global Agenda related-approach is the inter-sectoral interdependence reflected in the international community’s agenda marked by “AND” – “climate change and international security”, “human rights and societal cohesion” etc.

These agenda—and interrelated-ness—require, however, also institutional integration cutting across the institutional development marked by sectoral segregation. There is a rising need for each agenda sector to be fully up-to-date regarding the entire pattern of global challenges and the related plans of action, using this level of information for the development of institutional integration.

There is also a rising need for information flows between governmental/ intergovernmental and non-governmental organizations (NGOs).

The new global agenda benefits from the work and conclusions of academic institutions and programmes, a relationship which regrettably has not yet been fully recognized by the international system.

Many of our important global agenda items based their policy approach on research and academic discourse – e.g. the issue of environmental protection, the concept of sustainability, the process of climate change, the societal development needs and human rights etc.

Another dimension of the pluralisation of global governance affectedness and responsibility is the role of each and every citizen on the globe to know and understand these challenges and assume a rising responsibility in addressing them.

Certain agenda areas, such as environmental protection, the sustainable development and use of our natural resource systems, human rights and human security have given the citizen an almost central role in the achievement of the declared objectives.

Today, every citizen can contribute to the recognition of the dignity of the other and the related human rights. The impact of citizen-focused human rights programmes is visible in human rights cities in all regions of the world. The citizen creating conditions of societal cohesion also essentially contributes to peace and security.

Private sector decisions can make important contributions to both the natural resources related and societal cohesion-related challenges. Academic institutions must adjust their programmes of research and of university education to the global agenda-related challenges.

The cultural sector provides important inputs into the development of values and related behavioural patterns related to the challenges of pluri-identity societies and the integration of otherness.

All these new patterns of responsibility and contributions to achievements for our Global Agenda, however, do require qualified information. It must be recognized that complex academic or policy-process related studies and reports are not accessible to the general citizenship including those in positions of responsibility at local and national levels.

Even governmental institutions and the international diplomatic community cannot internalize all the documents which are to serve as a basis for multilateral negotiations.

The development of this new participatory system of global governance with intergovernmental institutions and processes, national governments and local authorities has led to the recognition of an urgent need for qualified patterns of information which translate challenges, achievements and failures to the political responsibilities at local, national and also international levels, to governmental, inter-governmental and non-governmental institutions who have increasingly shaped our Global Agenda and articulated the rising need for societal understanding and information.

Media are the classical providers of such information combining data with assessments and the vision of our common future. Yet, as analysis of the current situation underlines, there is an urgent need to strengthen qualified information systems which would provide not only governmental, intergovernmental and non-governmental institutions and the citizens but also the media with pertinent and needed information.

There is no way into a future of shared global responsibility without a qualified and also ethically committed system of information related to our processes of global change.

There is a need to recognize that such highly pertinent information related to our common future requires recognition and support from the global society as a contribution to our shared global public space.

This implies that support is to be provided from governmental, intergovernmental and non-governmental institutions. A respective policy discourse with participation from these institutions is to be envisaged in order to prevent the decay or elimination of qualified programmes like Inter Press Service.

*Walther Lichem, retired Austrian Ambassador with studies in law and oriental archaeology (Univ. of Graz, Austria) and political science (Univ. of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; Institute for Advanced Studies, Vienna) started his professional career in 1966 at the United Nations Secretariat in New York in the field of international water resources with development cooperation missions to Ethiopia (1971), Argentina (1971-74) and to the Senegal River Development Organisation (1980). He was also Rapporteur on international river basins at the International Conference on Water Law (Caracas, 1976) and at the IVth World Water Conference (Buenos Aires, 1982).
Ambassador Lichem undertook major assignments in the UN system at the Human Rights Summit in Vienna in 1992 and as Ambassador to Chile and to Canada, as a member of the UN Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space and as an adviser to the 16 countries sharing the Guinea Current in West and Central Africa on the creation of a regional organisation.

 

Innovative Sustainable Business: A Three Trillion-Dollar Opportunity that UN Environment Wants People to Develop

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Environment

Achenyo Idachaba-Obaro, the founder of Mitimeth, a social enterprise that has trained hundreds of women on how to make popular handicrafts from water hyacinth. Credit: Isaiah Esipisu/IPS

NAIROBI, Mar 12 2019 (IPS) – In the East African region, communities around the continent’s largest water body, Lake Victoria, regard the water hyacinth as a great menace that clogs the lake and hampers their fishing activities. But in Lagos, Nigeria, some groups of women have learned how to convert the invasive weed into a resource, providing them with the raw material needed to make handicrafts.

“Our biggest challenge right now is the market where these women can sell their finished products from the water hyacinth,” said Achenyo Idachaba-Obaro, the founder of Mitimeth, a social enterprise that has trained hundreds of women on how to make popular handicrafts from water hyacinth.

Dressed in a blouse partly made of fabric from water hyacinth and buttons made from a coconut shell at the ongoing United Nations Environment Assembly (UNEA) in Nairobi, Kenya, Idachaba-Obaro showcased several products made from the aquatic weed ranging from boutique dresses, unique multipurpose baskets, vases, stationery, wall decor, and dining ware, among others.

“All these items are a product of handcrafts by women whom we have trained, and they are now able to generate extra income from a weed that is seen as a menace to many other people worldwide,” she told IPS.

So far, over 350 women, comprising mostly of widows but who also include students and teachers, from riparian rural communities have been trained on how to make finished products from water hyacinth, and they all sell them locally.

“Whenever we have a ready market, we always call on them to make water hyacinth ropes for us, which is the first stage of developing any water hyacinth fabric,” said Idachaba-Obaro.

In the past few months for example, a team of 70 women were able to make ropes which earned them 1.4 million Naira (3,880 dollars). “It has become a big business in Nigeria where everybody wants to be involved,” she said.

Her exhibition was one of the 42 technologies and innovative solutions from around the world that formed the 2019 Sustainable Innovation Expo at the UNEA conference in Nairobi, which is being held Mar. 8-15.
To move such innovations forward through research and to later upscale them, Joyce Msuya, the U.N. Environment Acting Executive Director and Assistant Secretary-General of the U.N. urged countries to provide enabling environments for both innovators and researchers.

“Innovation will be the heartbeat of the transformation we want and this cannot happen by itself. Policies and incentives to spur innovation and sustainable consumption and production must be backed by efforts to build implementation capacity,” she told the more than 4,000 delegates from 170 countries during the official opening of the assembly in Nairobi.

According to Siim Kisler, the Minister of Environment in Estonia and the UNEA President, there is need to find innovative solutions for environmental challenges through different approaches to sustainable consumption and production, inspiring nations, private sector players and individuals.

The Expo is the U.N. Environment Assembly’s solution-based platform for engaging innovators using exhibitions that reveal the latest technologies, panel discussions, and networking opportunities.

Other innovative techniques showcased at the expo include ‘Timbeter’ a digital (mobile app) timber measurement solution that uses a smart phone for accurate log detection.

“With this app on your smart phone, you only need to point the phone camera to say a lorry full of timber, and it will accurately give you the total number of logs on the truck, and circumference measurement of each of the logs,” Anna-Greta Tsahkna the Co-founder of the Estonian-based Timbeter told IPS.

So far, the technology has been embraced in Thailand, Brazil, South Africa, Russia and Chile where companies are using it to share measurements with contractors and clients. They use it to count logs, the log diameter and density in less than 3 minutes. It is an important tool in eradicating illegal logging.

Apart from another exhibition by a Canadian company that uses shipping containers to create affordable and sustainable housing, Brazilian experts from a company called Votorantim were showcasing a technique where they extract DNA from different forest species to analyse their chemical makeup.

“This makes it easy for users to know which type of trees, plants, grass or anything within the biodiversity they should target based on what they want to extract for medicines, cosmetics, perfumes among others,” said Frineia Rezente, the Executive Manager of Votorantim, said.

According to a statement by U.N. Environment, innovative sustainable business represents a trillion-dollar opportunity that can bring value to people and the environment.